It just gets more and more bizarre. From The Navy Times:
The threatening radio transmission heard at the end of a video showing harassing maneuvers by Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz may have come from a locally famous heckler known among ship drivers as the âFilipino Monkey.â…
In recent years, American ships operating in the Middle East have had to contend with a mysterious but profane voice known by the ethnically insulting handle of âFilipino Monkey,â likely more than one person, who listens in on ship-to-ship radio traffic and then jumps on the net shouting insults and jabbering vile epithets….
Rick Hoffman, a retired captain who commanded the cruiser Hue City and spent many of his 17 years at sea in the Gulf was subject to the renegade radio talker repeatedly, often without pause during the so-called âTanker Warsâ of the late 1980s.
âFor 25 years thereâs been this mythical guy out there who, hour after hour, shouts obscenities and threats,â he said. âHe could be tied up pierside somewhere or he could be on the bridge of a merchant ship.â
And the Monkey has stamina.
âHe used to go all night long. The guy is crazy,â he said. âBut who knows how many Filipino Monkeys there are? Could it have been a spurious transmission? Absolutely.â
Here again is the audio (mp3) of that radio transmission.
On a more serious note, the BBC reports that “Iranian speedboats approached US warships in two previously undisclosed incidents in the Strait of Hormuz in December.”